Treadheads After Action Report from Avalon Conquest in Sacramento 11/09/14

The convention was a small one so not a lot of attendees. I did have two people sign up for my event. The two players were well experienced gamers and have played WOT for hundreds of hours and knew a fair amount about tanks and tank warfare. I started the game with only a few minutes of instruction and did not have them read the Quick Start rules as I wanted to see how quickly someone with above average knowledge of tank warfare could catch onto the game system with a minimum of instruction. We used my micro armor and terrain which is nothing to brag about so no pictures. We had enough room on the table to represent a playing area of 2000m x 2000m using 1” = 25m.

I’m giving the after action highlights of the game mostly from memory so some of it will be out of sequence, left out and may not make sense with other narrations, sorry about that. Armor angles are given with 0 degrees being vertical and 90 degrees flat/horizontal. Dispersion distances are the mean point of impact from the aim point in 0.1 meter increments. We were not using Ready Rack Ammo rules.

If you want to review the Quick Start rules first you can get them at: http://www.slideshare.net/wolfhag/treadheads-quick-start-rules-v1

The scenario started off as really a demo game with the German player commanding 1x Tiger I and 3x Panzer IVH’s. The Russian player had 1x IS-2 and 3x T-34/85. The initial range was 1800 meters and both players moved forward to close the range seeing that the chance of a first shot hit at 1800m was pretty slim.

The German player stopped his Tiger at 1700m and opened fire at a T-34 with the Ranging shot going 3.5m high from the center mass aim point putting it about 2 meters over the turret, miss. The German Panzer IV’s and all Russian tanks continued moving to within 1600m from each other and 1700m from the Tiger. The Russian IS-2 fired at 1600m on a Panzer IV with the Ranging shot going 1.9m low, miss. After a second shot a T-34 scored a hit on a Panzer IV driver plate armor which is 85mm at 10 degree slope giving it an effective 100mm of protection. The 85mm Russian gun has a penetration at 1600m of 96mm against the face hardened armor of the driver plate and the round failed to penetrate. However, since the round hit the T-34 can use Aimed fire (no range estimation error) on the next shot which is much more accurate.

All three Panzer IV’s fired Ranging shots at 1600m and missed but were close enough that their next Bracketing round would have about a 50% chance to be a hit.

The Panzer IV’s stopped their firing and decided to move out to get closer and closed to within 1400m of the T-34’s which opened fire on each other. The Panzer IV’s were a little quicker. One Panzer IV round passed between the ground and lower hull of a T-34 for a miss. The other two Panzer IV’s also missed.

At 1400m the T-34 that bounced a round off the driver plate of the Panzer IV on his last shot hit the turret face with an armor value of 50mm at 10 degrees giving 60mm protection but it did not stand up to the Russian 85mm gun with a penetration of 93mm and the Panzer IV crew bailed out minus the killed gunner and commander.

A shot from one of the T-34’s with a dispersion of 0.9m and 130 degrees hit a Panzer IV in the lower hull / nose plate. With an armor of 30mm at 65 degrees it gives an effective armor protection of 85mm. The penetration of the Russian 85mm gun at 1400m is 93mm and is enough to penetrate with the round detonating in the fuel tank behind the driver and exploding the tank in flames. See diagram below:

Illustration of round hitting fuel tank with a dispersion of 0.9m from center mass aim point.

The next shot from the Tiger I at the T-34 from 1600m hit the nose plate armor which is 45mm at 60 degrees giving an effective armor of 110mm. The dispersion from the aim point was 0.6m at 220 degrees. The penetration of the Tiger 88L56 gun at 1600m is 124mm and penetrated into the ammo storage on the T-34’s floor detonating it and exploding the turret off the tank. See diagram below:

Score: Germans 1x Tiger and 1x Panzer IV left. Russians 1x IS-2 and 1x T-34 left.

The Tiger engaged another T-34 at 1400m putting a round through the glacis plate of 45mm at 60 degrees giving 110mm of protection which was penetrated by the German 88 with 129mm of penetration. The round passed through the crew compartment killing the driver and wounding the gunner and commander and into the engine compartment but the German tank commander did not notice any damage (no smoking, fire or explosion) or crew bailing out so he must fire at the T-34 again.

A Panzer IV fired at a T-34 at 1200m with a center mass aim point. The shot was not real accurate with a 0.9m dispersion from the center mass aim point but good enough to hit. However, it drifted at 50 degrees impacting on the T-34 turret ring. A lucky hit! The round penetrated and exploded the T-34 ready rack ammo in the turret (blue shaded areas are ammo storage).

Illustration of the hit on the T-34 turret ring with a 0.9 meter dispersion from the center mass aim point.

The German Panzer IV’s took advantage of the IS-2 slow rate of fire (once every 20 seconds) to move to a hull down position 1000m and the Tiger I at 1200m from the IS-2 in a hull down position also.

The IS-2 fired at the Tiger with an aim pint at center mass on the turret (only part of the target exposed). He got a lucky hit with the round impacting on the Tigers muzzle brake and disabling the Tiger’s gun. The Tiger would have gotten a round off two seconds later but cannot now. That left two Panzer IV’s to take on the IS-2.

A T-34 hit a Panzer IV on the turret. However, it hit the part of the turret side that sticks out and is vulnerable to being hit from the front. This is at an angle of 75 degrees and is too steep for the round to bite into the armor so it bounced off. See the diagram below.

Illustration of round hitting turret side being fired from front aspect

Again taking advantage of the slow reload time of the IS-2 the two remaining Panzer IV’s moved to another hull down location only 1000m away from the IS-2. A Panzer IV open fire at that range aiming at the turret ring. The shot was not real accurate with a dispersion of 0.9 meter from the aim point. However, the dispersion direction was 90 degrees laterally to the right impacting on the turret ring on the IS-2 left side. At 1000m the Panzer IV gun the 75L48 has a penetration of 110mm giving it enough to penetrate or jam the IS-2 turret effectively taking it out of the fight. See diagram below:

Illustration of the round hitting the turret ring with a dispersion of 0.9m at 90 degrees.

Summary of the Action

Since all of the shots were pretty much head on there was no use of the Compound Armor or Moving Target rules. All together we played through 120 one second “turns” finishing the game in about 90 minutes. About half way through the game I stood back and watched the two players go through a number of turns without my help. The mechanics were select a target, determine fire control (first shot Ranging, successive Bracketing until target is hit), determine amount of time to get shot off (info on tank status chart) and put Action chit in future turn box to be executed and execute when it gets to that turn. Even though we played through 120 “turns” most of the time there was not an Action Chit in that turn box for a player to perform an action so we just continued. At the end of each 5 second increment vehicles moving were actually moved on the board, usually about 100 meters (four inches) at a speed of 30kph. This will probably not be clear to a lot of people until I post some turn diagrams.

Amount of time to get off a Ranging and Bracketing shot once gun is laid on the target: 19 seconds T-34, 18 seconds Panzer IV, 40 seconds IS-2, 21 seconds Tiger I. I didn’t keep an accurate count all of the shots but I think the IS-2 got off 5 rounds killing a Panzer IV and knocking out the gun of a Tiger. I think the Tiger got off 5 rounds with three hits knocking out two T-34’s. The players selected the Center Mass aim point to maximize their chance to hit. No one got close enough to select specific areas.

The German player exploited the Russian 122mm gun slow rate of fire by firing and moving being lucky enough to find hull down positions when stopping while closing the range. No one tried firing while moving as it was too inaccurate.

Using cards to randomize the dispersion in a bell curve was easy to use and saved multiple die rolls and chart look ups. The players seemed to like it rather than rolling dice.

While two turret ring hits in the game may seem unrealistic the turret ring on a T-34 takes up about 12% of the area of a one square meter if the aim point is the turret ring. At 1100m a German 88L56 would have about a 12% chance to hit it and a 75L48 a 12% chance at 800m if aiming at it if the range estimation was correct. That would drop to about a 4% chance on the first ranging shot with a 20% range estimation error. We didn’t have any rounds bounce off mantlets this game.

With the game being designed using formulas to generate historical firing tables and trig to get real armor values seems to communicate to players the game is not “fun” to play. The charts have a lot of data which at first makes peoples brains hurt. I can understand that and I am trying to simplify what I can. Probably the hardest part is figuring the angles on targets with many facets and rounded armor like the IS-2, Panzer IV and T-34 but then those differences are what makes each tank unique and generates unexpected but realistic results like rounds bouncing when you expected easy penetration. I’d say about 80% of the time the play goes quickly and easily. The other 20% would involve checking compound armor or moving target charts, drawing a randomizer card or rolling a die. It’s not really painful at all (always easy for the designer to say). The status cards give a good idea of the status of your tanks making it is pretty easy for a new player to control four vehicles/guns at a time. While it is a skirmish type game on the 2000m x 2000m playing area you could have 2-3 skirmishes going at the same time without needing to keep exact turn synchronization unless they start spotting each other. At Pacificon we played with 12 tanks and 3-4 players to a side without much of a problem keeping the different skirmishes aligned.

One surprise was how resilient the Panzer IV hull armor is against the Russian 85L52 gun. The only real vulnerable area at 1000m is the lower nose armor which is 30mm at 64 degrees giving it about 85mm of protection and a compound angle of 70 degrees if hit at from a horizontal angle of 35 degrees or greater. Everything else is over 100mm and the Russian 85mm gun having 105mm penetration at 1000m. However, the turret with an effective armor of 60mm and mantlet of 50mm is vulnerable out past 2000m.

There is no “Activation Check” in Treadheads as if you can spot an enemy you can react but it will take time to perform certain actions. I was watching Fireball Forward at the convention and it looked like a lot of the suspense was flipping the cards to see who and what activates and the ability to use your initiative chips. I try to create suspense and fog of war by having each side have their own turn chart to put their vehicle/gun Activation Chits. This way neither side really knows when they will get fired at. Situational Awareness is used to determine what the vehicle will notice going on around them in four different quadrants (front, l/r side and rear) with one check each 5 second increment. It’s harder to sense units moving on your flanks and rear, especially if buttoned up. We haven’t played fog of war by not allowing the opponent to know the status of damage to targets but we do force shooting until you see something definite that the target is knocked out. Unless something visual happens to a target (explosion, smoke, fire, bail out, etc) you must fire at it again. Using the Situational Awareness rules with 1 and 5 second time slices handles things like Opportunity Fire and Overwatch without additional rules, opponent turn interrupts or moving opponent’s vehicles back to fire at them. This is a big advantage over the IGOUGO type systems. The small time slices allows for realistic crew tasks and historic gun rates of fire without subjective abstractions. More play testing is needed and I’m looking for people in the SF Bay area or maybe people that use VASSAL.